In Last 6 Months, 253 New Food Trucks Opened In Austin

Cory Nunez has sold pressed sandwiches out of his Austin Daily Press cart for more than a year. Upwards of 250 food truck operators have opened in the last six months in Austin.

Photo by Caleb Bryant Miller for KUT News

Today's bone chilling winds are no friend to the city's food trucks, but occasional bad weather is not stopping the rapid growth of mobile food vendors in Austin.

Austin-Travis County Health and Human Services, which runs food permitting and restaurant inspection, says 386 permits were issued since August 2010. Of those, 253 permit holders have actually opened new mobile food establishments.

That brings the total number of permitted food vendors in the city to 1307.

With food trucks opening practically anywhere there's an empty lot, some people have been asking the question: Are we reaching a saturation point?

"You see a lot of trucks come and go right now pretty quickly," Austin Daily Press co-owner Cory Nunez told KUT in an interview in September 2010. "People realize that there's not a ton of money in it. It's just like the restaurant business in general."